Free-Flowing Rivers website launched
The Italian Centre for River Restoration and Wetlands International Europe have launched a new website on river connectivity www.freeflowingrivers.eu to draw attention to the importance of free-flowing rivers with easy-to-understand visualisation tools. The website, available in Italian and English, will help to evaluate the merits of different restoration actions in an engaging way and directly inform EU policy.
A defining initiative of the European Green Deal is to restore at least 25,000 km of free-flowing rivers by 2030. With this website, we aim to raise greater awareness of river fragmentation to accelerate the removal of barriers and achieve the free-flowing rivers target.
European rivers are considered the most fragmented freshwater ecosystems in the world, with over a million barriers. The website will be a valuable asset to promote the importance of river connectivity for the benefit of natural processes and migratory species during consideration of the proposed EU Nature Restoration Law (including the free-flowing rivers target) by the European Parliament and Council. The adoption of a Nature Restoration Law and its targets will be a key driver for removing barriers to meet the objective of good status required by the Water Framework Directive by the legal deadline of 2027.
The website is a joint initiative with the Italian Centre for River Restoration (CIRF) as a member of Wetlands International Europe. For more information, contact Andrea Goltara, director of CIRF at [email protected], or Paul Brotherton, Freshwater manager at Wetlands International Europe, at [email protected].
Learn more and visit the website:
Free-Flowing Rivers